A model of a technical system is typically a block-based, graphical representation of a technical system that exists in reality and is frequently a control system including an electronic processing unit and I/O devices connected to said processing unit. Such technical systems can be very complex. For example, they may model the entire electronics of a motor vehicle and include thousands of model components, which are connected to each other via their inputs and outputs (ports) via respective connecting lines (port association lines) and, thus, are in operative connection with one another.
The model components may be of the same type. For example, they may include only model components of a mathematical model of the technical system, such as conventional block diagrams in control engineering, which are used to describe the physical/technical functionality of the technical system using mathematical means (transfer functions, look-up tables, etc.).
However, models of a technical system which are created and used in a configuration tool frequently include different types of model components. The reason for this is that these models are created of technical systems, or of parts of technical systems, in order to interact with other, real technical systems, or with parts of real technical systems. This scenario occurs, for example, in the development of electronic control units (ECUs) and in the development of open- and closed-loop control systems to be implemented in control units. Here, the control unit is frequently in the form of a piece of hardware that is to be tested and has suitable I/O interfaces. To enable reliable and easy testing of the control unit, the environment of the control unit—a physical process—is modeled with the aid of a mathematical model in a simulator capable of computing the physical process in real-time. The variables to be measured by the control unit, and those to be output in response thereto by the control unit, are measured and output, respectively, via suitably programmable I/O interfaces of the simulator. The aforedescribed method is also referred to as hardware-in-the-loop simulation. There are other applications for creating models of technical systems, which may be summarized under the term “rapid control prototyping”. Going back to the aforementioned set-up, the control unit and the control system to be implemented in the control unit are here simulated and tested together with the real technical process. In both test scenarios, for which the model of a technical system, or of a part or a technical system, is to be created, the different portions of the test system; i.e., the control unit hardware, the I/O interfaces of the simulator, and the mathematical model of the technical process, are combined in the simulator.
A configuration tool, in which the model of the technical system includes different types of model components (i.e., model components of the mathematical model and/or model components of the I/O interfaces and/or model components of existing real hardware) is described, for example, in U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2008/0091279 A1. In this configuration tool, the model components can be displayed in an expanded component representation and in a reduced component representation. In the reduced component representation, the respective model component is only represented by a block that contains the name of the reduced model component and does not provide any information about the ports of the model component shown. In the reduced component representation, the ports of the respective model component are replaced by a reduced port, and the ends of the port association lines, which were connected to the ports of the model component that was previously shown expanded, but is now shown reduced, are connected to one single reduced port of the model component in reduced component representation. The manner in which the port association lines are displayed is governed solely by the selection of whether a model component is to be displayed in expanded or reduced component representation.
Due to the large number of model components in a model of a technical system, the selection of the reduced component representation for a model component provides an important way to reduce the immense complexity for a person working on the model, and to hide information that is less important for a particular work operation. However, when the representation of a model component is changed from expanded component representation to reduced component representation, a relatively large amount of data is hidden at once in one large step, so that it may be necessary to switch between the modes of representation of the model component relatively often during the development process.